Monday, September 04, 2006

On the world today

It's been a while since I've had the time to make a post on here. The world has changed in those three months. We've gone from "convergence" in IsPal to the new Lebanese war... Iraq is, well, okay, Iraq is still bad and getting worse...

Briefly: I never thought I'd be getting tired of the Middle East, but I finally am. Like everyone else, I have my tolerance level. That said, I still read Ha'aretz pretty regularly and I still generally think a real Palestinian state is the best way to go. The proposed unity government will be a good thing if it gets off the ground. For a while, the calls for the dissolution of the PNA looked like a good idea, but at this point if a unity government can be constituted and call for deployment of an international force in the territories, it would be a very positive step and one that Israel would have less traction in responding to (at least it would put Israel on the defensive, not that they'd ever agree to the idea, yet).

And Mexico! The U.S. government has done a good job of staying out. Calderon is the winner, and I feel comfortable saying that having supported AMLO in the election. Once the IFE certifies Calderon, AMLO will have a much tougher time getting out supporters, or so it should be hoped.

Plenty else is going on, but I don't have that much time. I'll be back as soon as I can to keep offering my unrequested thoughts on whatever catches my eye.

1 comment:

Japanese politics...Well, from what I've been able to gather from the news is that Abe is pretty popular in the LDP which means he's a lot like Koizumi. He'll probably continue working toward domestic reforms but he's been vauge about what he plans to do with Korea and China. He's a regular at the Yasukuni shrine but has mentioned that he may stop going if he becomes PM. This is only a good thing because Koizumi fucked up Japan's relationships with those countries because he continued visiting the shrine despite continued protests from Beijing and Seoul.